The Trump-deranged fever swamp currently known as MSNBC is at it again. In an insane segment on All In With Chris Hayes, a guest actually compared President Donald Trump’s firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to Hitler.
Back in the day, when someone said “with all due respect”, you could bet your bottom dollar that some disrespect was on the way. Such is the case with Professor Jason Stanley at The University of Toronto and his “I don’t mean to compare Hitler to Trump.”
ALI VELSHI: I- every Friday, the first Friday of every month I look at the BLS website. I actually love it because it's got a lot of data. This is really important. The average American never needs to know what the Bureau of Labor Statistics does. They don't need their data. You know what your employability is. You know whether you can get a raise. You know what your- your- your situation is. Academics need that. Economists need that. Journalists need that. Taking away a measure for which the US has been known as a gold standard, we gather better labor statistics than pretty much anyone in the world. Taking that away is part of this aim that authoritarian governments have about controlling the information and making sure everything is coordinated.
JASON STANLEY: Yeah. And how will other countries trust the United States? What's going on in the economy? They want to know how will you invest in the US economy if you do not know what's going on in that economy? It's really like an attack on the United States itself. It's a dramatic weakening along all kinds of dimensions. And that's exactly right. It's par for the course. I mean, it's very Soviet Union-style.
VELSHI: Right.
STANLEY: Like you simply declare….
VELSHI: This is what unemployment was.
STANLEY: Exactly. I mean, it's almost it's- gets to the point where it's almost comical.
VELSHI: Yeah.
STANLEY: It's comi…it’s so- it's so manifest. You said “slow drip of authoritarianism”. When you start to remove data like this, when you start to say, no, no, no, it's going to be the facts are going to be whatever the leader says.
VELSHI: Yes.
STANLEY: Whatever good for the leader. I mean, authoritarianism, science, I mean, and now I'm I don't mean to compare Hitler to Trump. I'm just quoting Hitler because of authoritarianism. He says “science is only useful insofar as it helps the nation and the race”. You know. So facts are only or, you know, anything is only useful. You don't. You only want to hear information if it helps you, if it doesn't help you, you erase it.
VELSHI: Jason, good to see you as always. Thank you for being with us. Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at The University of Toronto.
This exchange closed out the interview, which centered around “authoritarianism.” Specifically, the labeling of the Texas special session on redistricting. This preceding line from Professor Stanley stuck out as an egregious example of hypocrisy on the segment’s subject matter:
STANLEY: Yeah. So the- so when you start saying “Okay, well, we have to respond in kind. Which you have to respond in kind, at what point can you return to the rule of law?
This is a pretty straightforward admission that the left should engage in authoritarian tactics that go beyond the rule of law, which would be shocking had the left not already shattered the rule of law over and over again over the course of the past decade and a half or so.
Stanley wasn’t always at The University of Toronto. He previously taught at Yale, but left in a huff when the Trump administration began holding universities accountable for coddling antisemitism on campus.
And so it is that we arrive at the Hitler dog whistle. The desire to frame accountability in the data presented by the government as “authoritarianism” led Stanley to issue the Hitler comparison with fake walkback, potentially targeting both the president and his supporters for political violence, as we’ve seen over and over again- including two assassination attempts on the president.
This isn’t so much a discussion about authoritarianism. Rather, it is a rank projection of the left’s own dictatorial impulses, and a plea for the left to go all out when they regain power.
